musingsonwomenshealth.com

The raven himself is hoarse

There was a time when I thought I finally had a handle on gender: it’s a spectrum, right? It’s not defined by biology or chromosomes -it’s how you think, how you feel, who you are. It should not merely be assigned, it should be assumed. And just when I thought I was escaping from the…

gozzter

February 3, 2021

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Bell curve, binaries, biology, cis gendered, Feminism, Gender, philosophy, queer feminism, radical feminism, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, sex, spectrum, University of Warwick, Walt Whitman
What about Now?

Now can be a tricky thing to police, I think; it keeps changing its clothes, and each time I think I finally recognize it, I realize I’ve mistaken it for somebody else. Someone from a different time, perhaps; someone who looks a lot like a friend in another place, but who is a stranger here…

gozzter

January 27, 2021

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indexical term, instantaneity, John Martin Fischer, metaphysics, now, Ontology, philosophy, present time, singularity, temporal indexical, Time, University of California Riverside
Comfort like cold porridge

I go a lot by taste. It has usually been a fair guide to what I’m eating, but in this era of plant-based meat, I’m no longer as sure. I’m certainly in favour of diminishing my ecological footprint, and a career as a Vegan is not really in the cards, I’m afraid, but lately I’ve…

gozzter

January 20, 2021

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Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA, food, Food Chain Transparency, food labelling, ingredients, John G. Keogh, Meat Inspection Act, mislabelling, Safe Foods For Canadians Act, sausages, SFCR, The Jungle, theconversation.com, University of Guelph Biodiversity Institute, University of Reading, Upton Sinclair
The rest is silence

There’s something special about place, don’t you think? For some, it is a beautiful sight -a mountain, perhaps, or a field of flowers basking in the sun. I agree, of course -vision paints a scene- but for me, it does not capture it. Not completely. Photographs are only quiet markers of things that cannot truly…

gozzter

January 13, 2021

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forests, Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, mountains, Noise, One Square Inch of Silence, Psalm 100, silence, singing, Sound, The Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
Fake lies?

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about truth, but not for the reasons you might expect. Not because of the abundance of ‘fake news’ about which we seem to be constantly reminded, and not necessarily because I’ve been occasionally embarrassed in a lie, nor because of the tangled web you wove when first you practiced…

gozzter

January 6, 2021

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Albert Camus, assertions, authorial authority, boundary markers, David Hume, deception, edges, Emar Maier, ethics, Fake news, fiction, George Orwell, H.P. Grice, imagination, imaginative resistance, lies, literary fiction, literature, Plato, reportage, Sir Philip Sidney, speech acts, the paradox of fiction, trespassing, Truth, University of Groningen
Counterfactualities?

Remember Plato’s Cave allegory? In his Republic he describes a scenario in which some people have spent their lives chained in a cave so they can only see the wall in front of them. There is a fire behind them that casts shadows on the wall that they have no way of knowing are only…

gozzter

December 30, 2020

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Arthur Schopenhauer, counterfactuals, depression, depressive realism, depressogenic thoughts, Joseph Forgas, Julie Reshe, Martin Heidegger, Plato’s Cave Allegory, psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud, University of Tyumen in Siberia
Imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination. …

gozzter

December 23, 2020

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art, biosemantics, cave art, Columbia College, counterfactuals, imagination, language, Mark Johnson, metaphor, poetry, Richard III, Shakespeare, Stephen T Asma, task grammar, University of Oregon
Does the love of heaven make one heavenly?

Why do find myself so attracted to articles about religion? I am not an adherent -religion does not stick to me- nor am I tempted to take the famous wager of the 17th century philosopher, Pascal: dare to live life as if God exists, because you’ve got nothing to lose if He doesn’t, and everything…

gozzter

December 16, 2020

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Alain de Botton, BBC Future, Catholicism, Charon, Christianity, Constantine, Edict of Milan, Edict of Thessalonica, God, Hinduism, Karl Marx, Linda Woodhead, Pascal’s Wager, polytheism, religion, Sigmund Freud, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, the River Styx, Theodosius, University of Lancaster, Voltaire
Is the thing translated still the thing?

When I was a student at University, translated Japanese Haiku poetry was all the rage; it seemed to capture the Zeitgeist of the generation to which I had been assigned. I was swept along with others by the simple nature images, but -much like the sonnet, I suppose- I failed to realize how highly structured…

gozzter

December 9, 2020

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Alison Anderson, Haiku, literature, Mark Polizzotti, metaphrase, Muriel Barbery, paraphrase, poetry, Rilke, Rumi, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translation, translators
To hold, as it were, a mirror up to Nature

Who am I? No, really -where do I stop and something else begins? That’s not really as silly a question as it may first appear. Consider, for example, my need to remember something -an address, say. One method is to internalize it -encode it somehow in my brain, I suppose- but another, no less effective,…

gozzter

December 2, 2020

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Alan Watts, aphids, bacteria, boundaries, Derek Skillings, growth, identity, individuals, individuation, microbiome, reproduction, Shakespeare, skin, symbiosis, University of Pennsylvania